[New-Poetry] Re: Gilbert

[Suzanne Burns]

On 9/1/06, JforJames at aol.com <JforJames at aol.com> wrote:
>
>
> Suzanne,
> That aphorism never made any sense to me. So improbably uttered by that
> Cantos guy who believed that poetry began to atrophy the farther it got
> away from
> music. I guess I've never had any trouble seeing poetry dispense with the
> formality of the proper sentence.
>

It has never made sense to me to interpret "well-written" as following the
dictates of the Chicago Manual of Style.  Something that is "well-written"
to me is something that succeeds in creating meaning and finding
truth--meaning and truth which can absolutely be contained in not just
narrative but in the the music of language, the mood it creates, the
resonance of an image, its physical presnece on the page etc.

I'm a technical writer and believe me I am perfectly capable of being the
grammar nerd if it really matters-- but a poem is not a technical manual. I
read poetry because I am looking for something else, and as time goes on my
greater interest is in poets who bend the language and use punctuation and
syntax in ways that awaken me. I have a special love for poems that
skillfully abandon narrative structure and achieve meaning through other
means, music, ambience, etc.

This I think might be my aesthetic reaction *against* what I happen to do
for a living-- and it feels delightfully subversive.  If poetry can't do
that, something is lost.

My thoughts.

Suzanne Burns


-- 
"Start with your identity, which is a combination of your assets and what
your friends mean when they discuss 'the trouble with you,' polish that, and
you have style."

--Quentin Crisp
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